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Changing Climates for Microsoft and Google
ReadWriteWeb writes "Weather metaphors abound as this article looks at the evolving software environment — and in particular the competition between Microsoft and Google. Milan says that while Google enjoys relative dominance on the Web platform today, two fissures exist that will force them to move. The first is Microsoft's ability to use the exact same HTML based strategy as Google (like Microsoft's current Live initiative); and secondly Microsoft leapfrogging the current environment by solving rich application installation/un installation and enforcing an acceptable contract regarding what rich apps can do on a user's machine.
Unfortunately for Google, Microsoft is a lot closer to solving these two issues than people think. Microsoft has the best virtual machine with .NET, the best development tool with Visual Studio and the best access to developers with their MSDN programs. And they have a notion. Steve Ballmer himself has started touting the exact strategy they need — Click Once and Run."
Do you know anything about code access security in .net? Can you tell me, for instance if .net code off running the internet has permission to read and write arbitrary files? Hint: starts with a "n".
In order to have a successful application, Microsoft will either have to disable that protection, or require users to store their documents on a remote server. Additionally, single click 'installs' will eliminate the 'code running off the internet' problem. Microsoft has to face the classic problem of making their software secure, or remove the protections to make it stupid-simple to use. I know history doesn't always predict future performance and all, but which do you think they'll pick?
"index the world's information" so we can make contextual advertisements - Google.
That's all, folks. Seriously. Do as much research as you want. Advertisement is what makes the big $$$'s.
Besides, who knows what the future will bring? Fifteen years ago, if someone told you that you should start developing for Microsoft NT/AS because Novell wouldn't be a factor in the NOS business, would you have believed them?
You're right. But your example also proves the point that you simply cannot tell what the IT world will be like that far in the future, so why bend over backwards trying to develop for some platform that may or may not exist in the future? SOME foresight is a good thing, but it's simply not possible to look into the future to figure out what you'll need much further than, hell, a year or two, I'd say.
I use plenty of complex software - and write plenty of it. I just refuse to touch Emacs. And like the poster above me said, it is far from the best piece of software out there (RMS fanboy, are we?). I use vi under linux. It works. But a port of Visual Studio for Linux would work so much better ...
"Well, that's certainly not true of some of Microsoft's other offerings, so why would I automatically expect that from the .net team"
perhaps because you tried to claim you do .NET development, either you are an extremely poor developer that knows very little about your dev environment or a liar? you can choose whichever is more appropriate.